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This week has been a week of being laid back more than usual.  As you can see on the bulletin board, my printer is on the fritz and I’m waiting on it’s replacement…thank goodness for warranties..lol.  Week 7, a week of learning the letter F and number 6.  I added a new shape, ovals and if  you notice on the board I colored them in to help Emmi recognize them.  That worked pretty good to.  I added California to our list of states.  But, haven’t really touched up on it too much, I think next review week we do I’m going to stop teaching more states and do more fun games with them.  But, I did get Emmi a puzzle of the united states that we can do together too.  She loves puzzles so much I’m going to save it for her birthday that is in November.  That will be fun for us to do over and over again.

I added Rainbows to our theme this week and I even printed up a coloring page for Emmi to color the rainbow.  If you notice on the bulletin board the letter F practice lines with fox on it, we did that this week too.  As well as….you guessed it, more sponges!  LOL  I did numbers this week, up to the number 6 for Emmi to play with.

Funny part about doing the letter F this week, this weekend we even went to a birthday party and Emmi got a party gift of a fish to color on that holds a picture.  That was great since we talked about fish and how they start with F.

Since review week was our week for Halloween Theme, I came up with a fun project (granted I did most of the work but Emmi LOVED the end result). Going back to the foam fun we have, I decided to do a foam witch project.  We get in packages and some of them have foam pieces in them.  What better way to recycle than make them into some fun.  Now you can use foam pieces for lots of things.  Tub toys like we do or painting so you can dip in your foam and get the picture of your foam piece on your paper.  Here is the steps we took.

Supplies:

foam piece, marker that you will be able to see on the foam you use, scissors, a stencil or in our case we printed out what we wanted to use as a stencil

I took the printout that I printed and cut out our witch that we chose and here is the witch after cutting it out and I’m getting ready to trace it.

Then once I traced the witch I cut it out and here is the finale (Emmi loved it so much that she is the one who wanted to take this picture):

Remember this doesn’t have to be a witch, this project could work with any theme!  and I’m sure Emmi will want me to do this again..lol.  If you have any foam ideas, let me know! Enjoy!

We had a pretty good week with review week 6.  We went over our states and had a good time with our map.  Emmi even made a game that she was Mommy and I was Emmi.  lol

She did very good learning the new state Texas and of course we reviewed the other states which we continuously do regardless so she can remember them as we go.  :-)

We also had fun with the foam letters that I posted about in a previous post.  They really help her with knowing her numbers.  She plays with them every day in the tub.  I guess every kid has a toy they really enjoy…lol.  She loves playing with sponges.  haha.  Moving on to other letter activities.  Stencils!  She played with another stencil thing I have for letters.  And told me all the letters she was coloring in.

Adding to our letter fun, we did our snip it book:

I picked this up a while back at my local Walmart.  There are lots of pages for children to practice their cutting and pasting and in our case this week we kept it as the cut and stick (some of the pages you just peel off the paper and they are sticky so you just stick the colorful paper you cut fast to it).  We did Cake for the letter C that we learned in week 3.

Emmi really enjoys cutting up the paper and sticking them on.  Here is the final picture:

All in all review week was good, nothing to heavy and it kept her appeal.

This week I decided that since it’s review week, we can do a Halloween theme.  So we will probably try a craft with Halloween this week and she is helping to make a pumpkin pie.  Reminder, repeat for Thanksgiving. Needless to say we are laying back and enjoying review week.  Going over A, B, C, D, and E.  As well as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and our shapes that we have learned too (rectangle, square, circle, triangle, and star).  Since we have many states to learn I did introduce a new state, Texas.  With worksheets and crafts this week has gone by quickly.  I did do a bulletin board this week too.  So I printed up some sheets for the letters so we can do sounds with the letters.  On the Halloween picture I took the bottom where there was empty space and wrote in the numbers since I ran out of space quickly with the letter sheets.  I added a small picture of Texas too as well as a couple of sheets with shapes on them.

First off, thank goodness I was told this early…organize!  Keep your child’s work well organized.  Don’t forget that at the end of each “school” year you will have to do some sort of evaluation in order for your child to “move up” a “grade”.  FYI I use the quotes since really we are home schooling so what “grade” is your child in is not a question to worry about as much as is your child doing well and progressing as he/she should.  Each child is different.

Okay don’t let me get off topic here..lol. I can do that from time to time.  Chatty…no not me. Back to talking about organizing.  So I decided through my walk at my local Kmart store that will be closing permanently here that I would look at the stationary dept they had left and see what sales were happening.  Not good ones!  What kind of out of business sale is this I asked myself.  Well, moving down the isle I discovered folders on sale for like 10 cents.  Okay now we are talking.  This could work.  I grabbed a ton.  I grabbed one for each week in a school year, 32 weeks. And we can’t forget to grab a few extra because let’s face it, we are inexperienced and may find a few extra to be handy.  But, at least I’m trying right.

I also found some stencils there with letters, numbers, and shapes.  Woo Hoo!  We are always learning these!  Must have in my book.  :-)  And I’ll be honest here, I don’t have the most pretty handwriting.  With that said, I was happy to grab a pack.  And when we played with them, Emmi loved them.  :-) I couldn’t help myself either!  Here is the folders:

Of course I did one for each week but you get the idea with just a couple I’m sure.  I only got up to week 5 at the time and when I have time I’ll do a couple more.  The good news, I should haven’t to do this again for a couple more years as I learn more about organizing.  In each one of these I took her worksheets and coloring pages and whatever projects that she did (that would fit well into the folders of course) and put them into weeks.  Granted she won’t get evaluated this year, but I’m practicing so I can figure out more ways to get better at this.  Here is one of them opened up for you to see what I mean:

If you have any tips you want to share, please comment, we would all love to hear it!

We did a lot of reviewing along with the new stuff we learned.  Especially since this coming week is review week for us anyways.  We did  a lot of coloring pages and playing on the computer. I also made up some sheets and went over our numbers, letters and shapes to keep them fresh.  Emmi was happy to inform me that she enjoys the worksheets which I’m so glad that she does.  But I think this week for review we will try to do a craft/project of some sort and do more worksheets.  Our bulletin board probably won’t be used much this week except with what we learned in week 5.  And here is an example of one of the pages I did for her to go over the letters, numbers and shapes.  I would point to one and she would have to tell me what it was I was pointing at.

Okay well, this question is asked in our house a lot!  lol  Between owning two businesses and then when we go grocery shopping or whatever, my daughter probably can’t help but to want to play store.  Well, I thought of a fun way to play store AND do school fun!  Ya gotta be creative!  So, what I did was I made money with the numbers we have learned and the shapes we learned.

After I did that, I made up price tags for her toys she wanted to play store with

As she “bought” stuff, she would tell me what number and shape was on her price tags and would pay with the money and tell me what number and shape was on her money.  it was fun. If you noticed I just took some of another piece of paper and made a circle around the toy and attached the extra piece to the price tag with tape so it didn’t fall out.  She thought it was more like a store this way too.  So you might end up doing this more often then you think.

We’ve made our way to week 5!  Working our way to letter E and number 5 already.  Our bulletin board has all new stuff this week.  We changed our shapes page to a big star.  The first day of school this week we did some tracing with stars which was fun.  I found some stencils at Kmart for letters, numbers and shapes.  This was really great for making stars on paper and making a sky.  I showed her some pictures and we pointed out stars in them too.  Then we talked about our new state, Wisconsin, and how it is called the dairy state and we looked at their state bird too.   Lastly I grabbed a sheet of paper and in the first column I had listed out of order A through E. In the second column (again out of order) 1 through 5 and in the third all the five shapes we learned.  The object was to see what Emmi knew from what we learned so far.  I went in order doing letters, then numbers and finally the shapes.  But, I kept each column random so she couldn’t just sing the alphabet or count the numbers.  She did really good but next week when we review the first five weeks we can concentrate more on that.

In the meantime, we did some coloring pages with the number 5 and letter E on them.  Along with our theme of the week, Jungle.  We went to Busch Gardens on Monday, which we do often and have seen the animals before.  But, the more she does school, the more she wants to do more school..lol.  So we love going to check out the animals and made our way over to the lions and zebras and hippo.  We got lucky because when we got there we got to watch them talk about them and feed them.  It was neat to see them cooperate like regular cats.  They also fed the hippo and she came right up to the viewing window too.  So, needless to say she was anxious to learn about them all so I made this week Jungle week.  We have talked about the animals you can find in the jungle (and by the way I turned Jungle into our vocabulary word too).  :D  I traced a zebra onto a blank piece of paper and asked Emmi what zebras have, stripes!  Then I told her to draw the stripes and the jungle too.

We took a night this week and did a more unschooling method and used the computer on sesamestreet.org and watch and played the videos and games on there.  I did the numbers and the letters but it was different and made the night fun.

Since dogs are our a part of our theme this week, I decided while I was at Walmart to pick up some supplies.  I got some “Fuzzy Stix” which are the wires with the fuzz on them and they are all different colors. Plus I got some wiggle eyes and also I found the alphabet sponges.  Each of these are all only a couple of dollars each.  I try to be creative without breaking the bank.  :D  A great idea for the sponges (which is why most people buy them) is for painting.  You dip them in a paint and you can do all sorts of projects with letters.  I bought them because Emmi loves these little surprise sponge animals that come in a capsule.  You put the capsule in water and in a while it comes out of the capsule and becomes what ever little sponge shaped animal they have put in there.  We have a farm theme and also a jungle theme of these sponges.  She loves to play with the little sponges in the tub.  So when she saw these, she loved the idea of the letters she could play with in the tub.  I told her she have the letters we are learning and each time we learn a new letter she gets another sponge…lol.  She was all for the idea so now she has the first four letters:

Then we did our fuzzy stix dogs.  She helped my husband and I pick out our colors for our dogs and we both made dogs out of the fuzzy stix and glued on the wiggle eyes too.  I have to give my husband all the credit for the little dog, he is way more crafty than me…I’ll have to take lessons I guess..haha.

This week that was fun night of crafts.  Emmi is more and more interested in school.  As soon as we get home she can’t wait and asks to do school.  :D  We have done a few worksheets this week too of course.  We have done a few on the letter D and what starts with D.  We have worked with numbers and counting as well as a couple of sheets on “What does NOT belong”.

Wow can you believe that week four is here already!  Where does the time go.  This week we are introducing the letter D, number 4.  This week in honor of the letter D, I am making our theme about Dogs with our vocabulary work being canine.  Emmi decided she wanted to learn about Louisiana this week (because on our “fun” map of the U.S. there is a mask for Mardi Gras..lol).  We are doing a song for the theme this week, “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window”.  Also, the shape of the week is Triangles.

We started off the week by going over the previous 3 weeks letters and numbers to refresh the work in her mind and then as we posted the new work on the bulletin board we went over the new letter and number.  After posting those, Emmi wanted to learn about Louisiana so we talked about where it was located and what the mask was there for.  We also pointed out where the other 3 states we learned before were again (Florida, Tennessee, and New York).  And finally ending the day with doing worksheets with Triangles.  I found a great worksheet with a mish-mosh of shapes and Emmi put a circle in the Triangles and an X in the shapes that were not triangles (and we named each shape that wasn’t a triangle too since we have already been learning those shapes – rectangles, squares and circles).

Today we moved on to doing school a little different than we usually do, we worked on the computer.  :-D  I usually try and stay hands-on with crafts, projects, worksheets and coloring, cutting/pasting, etc.  But, since Emmi loves playing games and stuff on the computer (I’m sure most kids do..lol), I went on a couple of websites and played games with numbers and then we played some letters games.  There are lots of fun sites out there you can find with an easy google search for preschool games.  If there is some games that you like to do in particular, like we wanted to do letters and numbers games, you can search that or even better we like searching for preschool games.  :-D

We love playing with Play Doh (don’t most kids..lol)  and a fun way to do letters and numbers and remember them are with Play Doh!

We had fun doing both and Emmi had fun cutting them up into pieces too when I was done and then we got to start over again..lol

Last minute project that I decided to do with whatever craft stuff I had laying around the house.

Supplies:

wooden Popsicle sticks, glue, paper of your preference, pom poms, and a marker(s)

We started by gluing a bottom to our car so that we had something to glue the paper to and it could stand alone.

After that I cut the paper so that it would fit like a box shape car and glued the paper to the frame we made.

Once we got both sides glued on I let Emmi pick out pom poms for her wheels on the sides.

then I made another rectangular shape for on top so we had where the “windows” of the car are for the people..lol

The yellow pom pom is our steering wheel and last I drew people and the “openings” around the wheels to make them look more like wheels on the car..lol

Once the glue dried I took it off the white paper (that’s why we made that frame on the bottom).  This was a fun way for us to play and talk about cars and engines for our weeks theme.

Welcome to Week #3!!!  This week we are learning about Letter C, Number 3, cars with our vocabulary word “engines”.  We also added in a new state to learn, New York.  Don’t forget to pick a shape too, we chose rectangles.  I have kept our bulletin board jam packed with the passed weeks information too, so that we can do a quick review.  Little minds can easily move on and can sometimes forget so to keep it fresh I am consistently keeping up with going over the “old” material as well as bringing in the new material.  Here is a look at our bulletin board this week:

Since we are learning about cars, I printed out the lyrics to “The Wheels On The Bus” and we sang that our first day too.  I briefly went over the new letter and number we would be learning this week and the new shape, but Emmi seems to be catching on quickly to those.  As a fun game in the grocery store (or anywhere you may be that you can do this – we just happened to be in the grocery store), we pointed out letters and numbers.  Now when we go shopping, Emmi will say, “look Mom there is the letter…” and tell me what the letters are.  I found it to be a great way to bring school into more than just our “classroom”.  I think she is really enjoying it, knowing that what’s on the signs will soon start to make more sense as she get to know what each letter is.

As we were finishing up our Week 2, Letter B week, she was able to look at our worksheet and spell bat to us.  What a great feeling for all of us.  It is wonderful to get that far already in the “school year”.

So, this week we moved on to doing cars.  We talked about what cars have (wheels, engines, windows, etc), which brought up the word engines and what they do.  And at this point is when we started singing the bus song.

Afterwards, we moved on to some worksheets and talked about New York and how there is the Statue of Liberty and New York has mountains and Niagra Falls, etc.  I learned where it was on our map too and we reviewed the other states we learned in Week 1 and Week 2 (Florida and Tennessee).  The dry erase map that we have really makes learning the states fun.  It has fun stuff to remember about each state on one side and the states are blank on the other.  So first we find it on the “fun” side and then we flip it over and find them on the other.  It has really helped Emmi to remember their locations.

On days one and two of this week we mostly did coloring and tracing and learning the new letter as well as going over the old ones too.  Emmi was practicing learning her letters in this next picture:

She got really excited the better she was able to draw them and was even practicing them on her doodle pro the passed couple of days…lol.  She would be the teacher and draw them and then ask me what they were.  :-)  As the week goes on we are going to get more crafts done (and I would suggest more crafts to those children who enjoy doing more art projects than worksheets) but Emmi really enjoys coloring and drawing as well as the cut and paste worksheets too so we tend to stick with those a lot.  But the crafts are fun too and I hope to get her more involved with art projects with week now that our house is feeling better after having a touch of the flu.  :-)

We enjoyed doing a few worksheets this week.  Again, we kept it light due to everyone here being sick all week.  there were a couple of days we didn’t get to do much at all but go over things.  We grabbed a worksheet for the letter B to learn to recognize not only the capital letter B but also the lower case.  she traced it inside and we went over finding the letter B in the words at the bottom of the sheet.

We moved on to the number 2 worksheet.  What I did, I went into my purse and pulled out some pennies and grabbed Emmi’s change jar too.  Then as we did the worksheet, tracing the number two and then she practiced writing it herself.  Afterwards, she drew two circles in the jar.  I asked her to take two pennies and put them into her own jar.  It helped make the worksheet come to life.

We took a few minutes break from worksheets and talked about Tennessee.  She pointed it out a map we have of the United States, since that is where Grandma lives..lol.  We talked about a guitar since the map shows a guitar to help kids remember and I mentioned how Tennessee has mountains and valleys.  It was a great way to talk about our vocabulary word and how it relates to things today instead of just dinosaurs.

Finally, we worked on circles.  I really enjoyed this worksheet and how it helped to bring numbers in with the circles.  Kind of two lessons in one deal.  :-D  I asked her to find the number 1, the number 2, 3 and 4 and then I told her to find what colors needed to be used and she colored the numbers that were in the circles.

Luckily this week was a breeze for us since we were sick and we did mostly worksheets.  Emmi knew about all the stuff we did this week, it was just a matter of getting involved.

After getting familiar with what to expect to learn for the week, we did some fun stuff with dinosaurs.  I gave Emmi a coloring page with the dinosaur of her choice and she colored while I read some dinosaur facts to her.

There were lots of fun facts for kids.  It told us about how dinosaurs laid eggs and that some ate plants and some ate other dinosaurs.  We read how dinosaurs had bones and that is how scientists discovered and learned more about dinosaurs and how the lived millions of years ago.  It was a lengthy fact sheet but as we talked about each fact as she colored and it really kept her interest.  After I read all the facts, we went over some of the facts I read to make sure she learned some fun stuff about dinosaurs, including our vocabulary word, valley.

We started the week out by decorating our bulletin board with our new work.  This week has lack quite a bit of projects due to  us all getting the flu, so I apologize for the lack of content this week.  I was hoping to get done so many more fun things. We are learning about dinosaurs, the letter B, the number 2, circles and Tennessee But here is our bulletin board for this week:

Emmi wanted to pick dinosaurs for this week.  She loves watching The Land Before Time.  And all dinosaurs are called “Sarah” and “Littlefoot”.  lol.  If you look at our board, we have a page with fun songs about dinosaurs in the top left corner.  Next to that is an outline of two dinosaurs to remind us of what we are learning this week.  Right next to the dinosaurs I put in a picture of a valley since we did valley as our vocabulary word this week.

If you remember we have four shapes in the top right hand corner that we weren’t changing since we are continuing to work on the same sheet.  This week Emmi wanted to do circles.

On the bottom, you can find sheets with the letter B on it and the number 2 as well as we are learning about Tennessee this week.

The last day of the week I went over the letter A again.  The most important part of going over the letter A was teaching Letter A has a capital A and a lower case A (we called it ‘big A’ and ‘baby A’).  Here are some worksheets we practiced tracing:

Then we practiced the number one with this last worksheet.  It has tracing and practice writing along with circling the objects that only have one item in it:

I also want to add in a picture I took of some great books that I picked up that are fun to do instead of always doing worksheets:

I have a large bulletin board that I got out so every day we can look at it and refer to what we are learning.  Since I taught about cows this week, you can see they are up there and I talked about them living on a farm.  This week was a breeze and I kept it that way to help ease her into the routine and keep from discouraging her from learning.  :-)

You can also see we have a worksheet on the bulletin board that has different shapes.  We are practicing a different shape each week, so this worksheet will be up for the next 3 weeks as well while we go over all the shapes.

We also are going over the letter A and the number one, so those are in the hearts on the board too.  I even have a letter A with the children with apples up.  As well as we are learning the different states.  I know most people don’t start teaching about the states for a while, but since my daughter takes an interest in where her different relatives live, we started with Florida (where we live).  I would suggest if your child is not ready for any one of these, to start with something that they are and work your way through.

Here is a worksheet that we worked on with Florida, I printed up a fun colorful  page with all sorts of stuff that you can find throughout Florida and then I gave my daughter a page that is a duplicate of the one of Florida on the board and had her draw things she saw on the colorful page.  It was a great way to have her learn these things that are associated with the state and have a great time doing it.  :-)

After that we practiced our squares, she got to trace them and learn the difference between squares and rectangles:

Finally we worked on Cow Facts.  I just printed out some fun facts about cows she would enjoy (she wanted to drink a cup a milk afterwards because milk comes from cows..lol)

We are doing numbers too this week and here is a small project we did. I did a quick search and found a project where she gets to cut out the numbers and we have to place them in order. We are concentrating on the number one this week. But, as something in addition to tracing and since she could already recognize the number one, we did this project.

Supplies:

Paper to cut out the numbers, Scissors, Glue

This is a great way for them to learn cutting on the lines and the glue is always fun for them!